Dr. Bryan Dicken no longer asks fellow doctors what kind of day they’ve had. Instead he asks how many patients they had cancelled because of a lack of beds at the Stollery Children’s Hospital.
“That’s a terrible way to practice medicine,” the surgeon said during a news conference held Thursday, hosted by the Alberta NDP.
Dicken said he has no political affiliation. But he was blunt in his assessment of the situation facing children waiting for surgeries.
“It’s not reaching a crisis. It’s already a crisis,” he said.
From April 2014 to December 2014 the total number of cancelled surgeries was 200, according to data from Alberta Health Services.
“The emotional roller-coaster that those families go through, the loss of income, the time for travel and then having to be cancelled multiple times, it’s overwhelming,” Dicken said.
Dicken said the hospital is well beyond its 150-bed capacity, a situation that he said puts some patients at risk.
The NDP has used the cancelled surgeries as a way to highlight what it calls the government’s incompetence when it comes to managing health care. The party raised the issue in question period on Thursday.
“We are heading to greater and greater levels of cancellations, it’s a structural problem it’s not a blip and the government has absolutely no plans in place to deal with that,” said NDP Leader Rachel Notley.
Infrastructure Minister, Manmeet Bhullar fired back in the legislature, saying that the government was open to suggestions on how to improve access to the health care system.
Earlier this week, Health Minister Stephen Mandel acknowledged the increase of patients at the Stollery, saying there’s been a 17 per cent rise in emergency surgeries done at the hospital, adding the number of flu cases have put a strain on the system.
Still, when Dicken books a surgery it now comes with a caveat: “I say I’m going to warn you you may not get your surgery on that day because of the bed crunch.”
